The Cocktail Party is a play by T. S. Eliot. The play was the most popular of Eliot's seven plays in his lifetime, although his 1935 play, Murder in the Cathedral, is better remembered today. It focuses on a troubled married couple who, through the intervention of a mysterious stranger, settle their problems and move on with their lives. The Cocktail Party was written while Eliot was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey in 1948. It was first performed at the Edinburgh Festival in 1949. In 1950 the play had successful runs in London and New York theaters (the Broadway production received the 1950 Tony Award for Best Play.) The play starts out seeming to be a light satire of the traditional British drawing room comedy. As it progresses, however, the work becomes a darker philosophical/psychological treatment of human relations. As in many of Eliot's works, the play uses absurdist elements to expose the isolation of the human condition. In another recurring theme of Eliot's plays, the Christian martyrdom of the mistress character is seen as a sacrifice that permits the predominantly secular life of the community to continue. Elements of the play (namely, and perhaps only, Edward's initial concealment of Lavinia's absence) are said to be based on Euripides' play Alcestis. In 1951, in the first Theodore Spencer Memorial Lecture at Harvard University Eliot criticised his own plays in the second half of the lecture, explicitly the plays Murder in the Cathedral, The Family Reunion, and The Cocktail Party. The lecture was published as "Poetry and Drama" and later included in Eliot's 1957 collection On Poetry and Poets. Synopsis Edward Chamberlayne's wife Lavinia has left him, after five years of marriage, just as they are about to host a cocktail party at their London home. To keep up appearances, he pretends that she has gone to see her aunt. Later, he confesses to a mysterious Unidentified Guest that Lavinia has in fact left him. The Unidentified Guest offers to bring Lavinia back, and does so. The Unidentified Guest turns out to be the 'psychiatrist' Sir Henry Harcourt-Reilly. Edward and Lavinia both consult with Reilly at his office. He tells them that they have been deceiving themselves and must face life's realities: their life together, though hollow and superficial, is preferable to life apart. This message is difficult for the play's third main